The nutrition director spent months fingerprinting students at the Lisbon Community School this year, an elementary school packed with 750-plus kids.
It was slow going, just him and sometimes some awfully tiny prints.
He’s readying for what’s likely to be a first-in-the-state launch.
Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, meet the future:
Next year the Lisbon school will use fingerprint ID in the hot lunch line.
Each pair of index fingers has gone into a computer that turns the distance between loops, ridges and swirls into a math problem unique to that kid.
It’s the same sort of technology local Pizza Hut employees have used to activate their registers since September.
It’s technology that 230 state workers now use to turn on computers with extra-sensitive information.
Even home computer users are snapping up readers for as little as $80 to shortcut log-ins and passwords.
Long the domain of cops and crooks, the fingerprint has gone mainstream.
Broadly known as biometrics, fingerprint ID is being used by other states’ Medicaid programs. It’s how employees punch into work. It’s at convenience stores in North Carolina. No money? Stick out a thumb.
In Lisbon’s case, each finger is linked to an in-house debit account loaded up by parents.
“It’s new to the public, it isn’t new to law enforcement,” said Cindy Homer, a forensic scientist at the Maine State Police Crime Lab. “Biometrics is becoming such a popular thing. Who would have thought you’d be scanning your fingerprint to get lunch?”
Parents’ prerogative
Touted as convenient, accurate and theft-proof, the trend isn’t without some worry.
Other districts in Maine have tried to upgrade lunch lines and been turned back by technical glitches and concern.
“When you mention fingerprinting, (parents) just go off the wall,” said Walter Beesley, an education specialist at Child Nutrition Services within the Department of Education. “There’s been a lot of noise about it.”
He’s quick to call it finger-imaging, not fingerprinting: Machines read the highlights of the print – selected swirls and whirls – not the print itself.
He’s not aware of another school here that’s gotten it off the ground yet. Alaska has been finger-imaging students for years, with success, Beesley said.
James Damsgaard, director of nutrition for the Lisbon schools, has had three or four families object.
“That’s their prerogative,” he said.
Those students will get bar codes to swipe, the backup he’s intended if his system doesn’t go live.
It cost between $10,000 and $12,000 for the lunch line package that includes the image reader. Besides the high-tech ID, the new software better tracks what kids eat and spend, and can relay that information if parents ask, he said.
Under the current design in the elementary school, kids raise their hands in the morning to signal they’d like hot lunch. Teachers take a meal count and tell the kitchen – an inexact science.
This is more accurate, he said, without requiring 5-year-olds to tote a meal pass every day.
“A kindergartner, he doesn’t have to remember seven digits, he doesn’t have to remember four, he doesn’t have to bring a card. My middle-school(ers) loses cards left and right,” Damsgaard said.
He said he checked with police to determine whether the images could be used in an investigation and was told no.
Damsgaard has 75 percent of the students – kindergarten through sixth grade – logged in the machine. He hopes to do the rest in the fall and switch in the winter.
“We have 500,000 kids using their fingers for lunch when school’s in session,” said Mitch Johns, president of Food Service Solutions, a company that sells the MorphoTouch product. “That’s a lot of kids.”
The systems are in schools in 30 states.
“What a waste of money,” said Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. “You can quote me on that.”
Safeguards, police
Bellows’ group is concerned about the trend toward increasing use of fingerprints in general and potential collection.
“A fingerprint is a personal, permanent, private piece of information most often used by authorities to apprehend criminals. Compiling this information in a database is extremely dangerous. Government entities don’t have a good track record with maintenance of private information,” she said, pointing to the recent theft of personal information on millions of veterans.
Homer at Maine’s crime lab said police have used biometrics for decades, but the question of whether police could use something like a lunch line print has more to do with access.
“All we have access to is criminal records. That’s the only thing that’s legally available to us,” she said. The state has done deep background checks on teachers for several years; police don’t use that data. “We can’t even access a fingerprint record for a teacher even if they’ve been killed and we’re trying to identify a body.”
As with any system, there’s potential for hackers. It’s important to know what information is being saved and what limits have been placed on access and sharing, Homer said.
According to information provided to Lisbon school officials by their system’s distributor, the full print “is discarded from the record and is no longer available to the system or any operator” as soon as highlights of a child’s swirls and arcs are identified and recorded. (See illustration.)
Eve Fillon, senior market analyst for Sagem Morpho Inc., said comments about Big Brother and what becomes of the prints are natural.
“You’ve got stores of information. What is put in place to protect this information?” she said. “We can just say we will do our part. It’s a template, it’s not an image. It can’t be stolen, it can’t be reverse-engineered.”
Whatever your feelings, expect to see more.
Files that open to a touch
In 2005, the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation started using fingerprint ID on 200 computers that monitor banks and insurance companies and contain license applications, according to Dick Thompson, the state’s chief information officer.
Devices cost $100 per machine, plug into a normal port, and are programmed to respond to one user each.
Files open up for the right person with the right print.
“It is more secure than a user ID and password because people forget their passwords or pick something simple,” Thompson said. “We may, at some point, consider them for other areas, whether it’s in the correction system or other things.”
Within the last six months, the Department of Labor launched a pilot with 30 similar computers in the employment bureau after talking with state labor union leaders.
“We work with a lot of sensitive information like wage numbers, Social Security numbers,” said Adam Fisher, department spokesman. “We’re always looking for new ways to improve security. The trouble with passwords is they get written down. … There’s obviously privacy concerns. We got past the issue that we’re not collecting fingerprints.”
Echoed Thompson: “People worry that their whole fingerprint is on file and it’s not.”
In addition, Fillon said the images kept by scanners typically aren’t detailed enough to be used by law enforcement.
From payroll to pizza
Her company has the contract for a pilot program in Texas that puts biometric scanners in doctors’ offices. Medicaid patients punch in and out for service.
“That way someone can’t take someone’s card and see the doctor in their stead,” Fillon said. “It sure does a lot to diminish the problems of fraud.”
Eventually, by order of a Homeland Security directive, all federal workers and contractors will have to have biometric ID to enter government facilities, she said.
“I think it’s something you’re going to see more and more in the U.S.,” she said. “The last decade, the technology has really matured.”
Paychex Inc., one of the largest payroll and human resources service providers in the country, owns Advantage Payroll Services.
They sell biometric time clocks: Employees use a finger to punch into work.
People don’t have to worry about forgetting badges, said Jon Clements, Paychex product manager for time and attendance – “It’s kind of hard to leave your finger at home” – and it clamps down on “buddy punching,” when someone running late asks a friend to clock them in.
No takers in Maine yet for that particular offering.
Biometrics is getting more reliable, price is coming down and it’s benefiting from a security push after Sept. 11, Clements said.
Fingerprint ID readers are now available at electronics stores, for personal use on laptops and home computers.
Crystal Baillargeon, manager of The Italian Bistro Pizza Hut on Center Street in Auburn, said the franchise owner installed print-sensitive machines in all his stores last fall for one reason: theft.
Across his franchise, it’s going to save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“A code is something you could pass onto somebody or can actually be observed. A finger is what it is,” Baillargeon said.
The drawback: The register doesn’t like employees with wet or greasy hands.
“Then again, it’s more of an advantage. People are washing their hands even more,” she said.
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